Maghreb Blog

Sunday, April 7, 2019

*This article appeared preciously on al-Jazeera, but I am reposting it in light of the news that a Moroccan court upheld the long jail terms for some of the Hirak protesters.

Today marks the eighth anniversary of the death of Abraham Serfaty, a prominent Jewish Moroccan political activist. Serfaty was an avowed communist and anti-colonial nationalist who opposed the French protectorate in Morocco. As a leading Marxist-Leninist activist, he was first arrested and exiled by French colonial authorities in the early 1950s, then imprisoned for 17 years and stripped of his citizenship by the Moroccan monarchy in the following decades.

In 2000, he was rehabilitated after the death of King Hassan II, allowed to return to Morocco and even handed a royal advisory position by King Mohammed VI. Serfaty passed away just months before the wave of Arab uprisings hit Morocco in February 2011. His passing in November 2010 - just a month before Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire sparking the Arab uprisings - symbolically marked the advent of a new generation of protest movements in Morocco.

Unlike the formally organised and ideologically motivated opposition forces that Serfaty led in the 1970s, the current forms and methods of activism in Morocco are leaderless, non-ideological, and often triggered by accidental events emblematic of the everyday socioeconomic struggles of the general population.

Although the expression of dissent has changed over the past decades, the reaction of Moroccan authorities to it has not. The use of institutional manipulation to stifle the persistent protests of the past eight years is not so dissimilar to tools the authorities employed back in the 1970s against the leftist opposition - a reality Serfaty would have surely lamented and criticised had he lived long enough to witness it.

The 'Makhzen' and decentralisation of social protests

In the wake of the Arab uprisings, the Moroccan monarchy was seemingly enjoying an elevated status within the political sphere which put it above political reproach. This special status had been guaranteed by the provisions of the Moroccan constitution and solidified by the historical authority of the so-called "Makhzen" - the monarchical regime and deep-state elite networks.

The Makhzen allowed the monarchy to effectively control the political process in Morocco while appearing to be above the political fray (and hence carrying no direct responsibility for immediate crises). To maintain this dynamic, the monarchy increasingly resorted to the ritualisation of the political process in Morocco, employing ceremonies, spectacles and public performances that consecrated the king's status as the arbiter and guarantor of order and stability. Through the usage of culturally and historically resonant symbols, the regime ritualised public discourse, which allowed it to extend and reproduce legitimacy.

But the popular protests that erupted in February 2011 challenged this legitimacy. As a result, the monarchy had to adjust to the pressures of the new forms of activism which the "Moroccan spring" ushered in by reviving old dissent-stifling tactics like reshuffling cabinets and holding electorally-engineered legislative elections.

Historically, the Makhzen has resorted to recycling political parties and coalitions to maintain the facade of competitive political participation. It used this same method in 2012 to respond to the popular protests; a sham opposition was given the reins of power - in this case, the Islamist Party of Justice - to serve as a counter-weight to popular dissent.

Faced with the powerful Makhzen, the opposition parties and the February 20 movement have largely been unable to achieve their aims to bring about deep socioeconomic and political reforms. Nevertheless, the February 20 movement and subsequent social protests managed to lift the veil of fear and to demystify the monarchy.

The Arab uprisings also led to the decentralisation of social protests, which moved away from urban centres to Morocco's peripheral regions which share common political and economic grievances. The rise of spontaneous organic forms of political and social activism is a hallmark of this new activism scene in Morocco.

These "non-movements" of peripheral protests in various regions of Morocco are rarely guided by an ideology or led by an organised leadership or structure. Even the emergence of Nasser Zefzafi as a prominent activist in the Rif (the northern mountainous region of Morocco) is almost as accidental as the events leading to the year-long al-Hirak al-Shaabi (Popular Movement) protests.

The wave of demonstrations started as a result of public outrage at the incidental death of Mouhcine Fikri, a 31-year-old fisherman crushed in a garbage truck as he protested against the seizure of his fish by the police in 2016. Zefzafi's interruption of the Friday prayer sermon in a mosque in the city of al-Hoceima in 2017 was a spontaneous, not calculated, expression of anger and desperation against a hegemonic cultural and political discourse of domination. Therein lies the novelty of current social activism in Morocco: protests emanate from shared experiences of large numbers of ordinary people carrying common socioeconomic grievances.

'Hogra': Resisting extreme injustice

The collective anger at the deteriorating socioeconomic conditions and standard of living in Morocco over the past few years has been captured by the Moroccan dialect word "hogra", roughly meaning extreme injustice.

Hogra is perceived by many as a defining feature of the Makhzen's entrenched authoritarian edifice - a cultural and political system of humiliation and scorn, which is perceived to be institutionalised and practiced by state bureaucracies towards the poor, the youth and the disenfranchised. Hograalso refers to state abuse of power and corruption by the elite.

The growing wealth gap in Morocco provides the starkest reminder of hogra: Moroccans see the luxury cars, opulent palaces, and other ostentatious accessories of wealth while at the same time experiencing systematic subjugation and impoverishment in their everyday life. Over the past few years, civil disobedience of varying scale and form has erupted across Morocco as a way of resisting hogra, such as the ongoing protests in the remote Amazigh village of Imider against the exploitation of the village's groundwater by a silver-mining company owned by the regime's oligopoly Societe Nationale d'Investissement (SNI), the coal mine protests in the northeastern border town of Jerada, and the demonstrations sparked by water shortages in the desert town of Zagora.

Another manifestation of these spontaneous acts of resistance has been the unprecedented economic boycott of Morocco's dairy, mineral water and fuel-distribution oligopolies that have close ties to the regime. The boycott has largely been launched on social media platforms and has been successful in raising awareness of the transgressions of Moroccan oligarchs.

These organic acts of protest have unmasked the failure of the regime's strategy of appearing above the political fray, while at the same time managing the political system and opposition forces. The monarchy's constant manipulation of the political party scene and civil society has removed the buffer between the royal institution and the people and has exposed the palace to direct public scrutiny.

Its increasing inability to constructively deal with social unrest has forced it to resort to the use of old oppressive methods of control. For his spontaneous act of dissent, Zefzafi, for instance, was sentenced to a draconian 20 years in jail - a punishment reminiscent of what Serfaty and other leftist activists faced in 1970s Morocco. But while Serfaty's sentence was the result of his opposition to Morocco's annexation of Western Sahara in 1975, Zefzafi and other youth protesters are imprisoned today for demanding jobs, economic development and an end to sociopolitical marginalization. The profiles of Morocco's activists today may be significantly different from the ones active in the oppressive "years of lead", but they currently face the same repressive methods of the Makhzen as their predecessors did. And, while in the past these methods were relatively effective, they increasingly appear to be failing to placate the simmering anger of ordinary Moroccans.

Sunday, June 24, 2018

Morocco's King Mohammed VI sacked four ministers and barred five
former ministers from ever taking official duties last year. The king's "wrath"
comes as a rebuke for the government's poor performance and for "serious
dysfunctions" in a five-year development plan launched by the king in
2015 to promote socio-economic development in the northern al-Hoceima
region.

The unprecedented move by the Moroccan sovereign is
presented as an attempt by the palace to introduce some government
accountability. However, the sacking of government ministers is merely the
latest example of the increasing royal emasculation of the political class, and
an astute deflection from the palace's own responsibility in the current
socio-political malaise in Morocco.

More importantly, the latest royal move points to a
growing king's dilemma. The regime’s dual strategy of appearing above the
political fray, while at the same time managing the political system and
opposition forces is increasingly under duress. Through an interplay of
discursive and institutional mechanisms of control, the monarchy's
constant manipulation of the political party scene and civil society has
removed the buffer between the royal institution and the people, and has
exposed the palace to direct scrutiny.

This "political earthquake", as many in
Morocco have called the royal decision, comes a few months after the king's
throne day speech, which laid the blame for current political paralysis in
Morocco everywhere else but the monarchical regime. Last July, King Mohammed VI
delivered a strongly-worded opprobrium to the political elite chiding them for
lack of creativity and for hiding behind the palace.

In so doing, the king cast his institution above and
outside the political elite, as if Morocco was a true constitutional monarchy,
where the regime is at a distance from the travails of politics. Most notably,
the king didn't offer any words or vision that would appease the year-long
"Hirak" protests in the Hoceima region. Instead, he later gave amnesty to some imprisoned Hirak
activists in a gesture that further consecrates the regime's control of the
political system and, ironically, contradicts the narrative the king wove in
his speech.

The king's decree to sack government ministers comes a
few months after Morocco underwent a political crisis, which hindered the
ability of former Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane to form a government due
to a political gridlock manufactured by royalist political parties. This
showcased the supremacy of the regime vis-a-vis the political class, where
popularity and populism are reserved for the monarchy, and not for any one
political leader, as Benkirane found out last March.

In the throne day speech last July, the king
lamented that: "the evolution witnessed in Morocco in the political
domain and in the area of development has not led to the kind of positive
reaction you would expect from political parties, leaders, and government
officials when dealing with the real aspirations and concerns of
Moroccans."

The monarch excoriated those politicians
whose "mentalities have not evolved" to match that said
evolution. But unlike what the speech leads us to believe, the monarchy is
not a passive actor in the Moroccan state edifice. It is well-entrenched in the
system, and has for decades fostered a patronage system inimical to
transparency and accountability, and conducive to venal practices, rampant in
the Moroccan state and its institutions.

The royal decision aims to deflect away from the
palace's own shadow cabinet, which in fact holds most political and
administrative power, and whose members are the architects of the Makhzen state
and Morocco's neo-liberal policies. The kingdom may be, in the words of the
sovereign, "enjoying economic dynamism which creates
wealth," but that wealth has largely been concentrated in the orbit
of the palace and its cronies.

The discontent of the king is paradoxically a result of
decades of monarchical control over the political system and its management of
the political party scene. The regime has emptied it of any significance and
created a political vacuum.

The recycling of party coalitions in the
government allowed Morocco's monarchy for years to foster a set of
political practices that meet the needs of a modern state with an effective
concentration of power. The Moroccan monarchy has a long tradition of
manipulating opposition parties through cooptation within the formal political
sphere, allowing them some stake in nominal power.

In Morocco's political system, all political parties
must submit to the regime as a prerequisite for political
participation. Moroccan governments historically have been subverted by
the monarchy's far-reaching prerogatives and constitutional powers.

No government has had the effective political mandate
to govern. This has weakened the political parties in Morocco, which for the
most part suffer from a lack of mobilisation capacity. Elite consensus on the supremacy
of the regime prevents political parties from directly challenging the king's
power. The regime's ability to co-opt new bases of political appeal clutters
the public sphere, making it less open to alternatives from opposition
forces.

The regime's manipulation of the political system is
intentionally fragmented into "divided structures of contestation",
as the monarchy allows select political opponents to take part in the political
system while excluding others. These spheres of political contestation
condition government-opposition relations and dictate the rules of the game
under which the opposition plays within the formal political system. The
resulting recycling of political parties and coalitions is necessary to
maintain the facade of political participation.

But this strategy has run its course. While it has
sustained the monarchy in the past, the monarchy's constant control over the
political sphere is ill-devised in the post-Arab uprisings, where the protests
of February 20 and the current Hirak movement in al-Hoceima have somewhat
demystified the monarchy. The duality between regime and state that the
Palace has woven for decades to shield its edifice from any reproach is no
longer plausible in the eyes of an increasing number of Moroccans. The
monarchy’s consistent attempt to face new challenges to the state with old
autocratic tools shows significant fissures. Street demands would have been
absorbed by civil society and channelled through institutional mechanisms if
the Makhzen, at the behest of the palace, hadn't impoverished the political
scene and enfeebled its most promising actors. The king's scathing criticism of
the political elite is, in fact, a critique of his Makhzen. Moroccans
would welcome a true neutral stance from the monarchy, which might ease in turn
the looming king's dilemma.

Saturday, April 8, 2017

After an unprecedented five months
of post-election gridlock without a government, Morocco’s King Mohammed VI dismissed prime minister designate Abdelilah
Benkirane on Wednesday. Benkirane’s Islamist Party of Justice and Development
(PJD) won a plurality of seats in the legislative elections in October 2016 and
appeared well on its way towards a second consecutive term at the helm of the
Moroccan government. But negotiations did not go as planned. The dismissal came
just a few days after Benkirane refused to acquiesce to a major alliance
party’s demands to widen coalition talks and was widely seen as an attempt by
the monarchy and its deep state network of elite allies, or makhzen,
to regain political power. While the decision may have been unexpected, the regime’s
logic is familiar. As Benkirane and his successor know well, they must play by
the monarch’s rules. As it has done in the past, the regime is seeking to
reconfigure the Moroccan political scene. The PJD, especially under Benkirane,
may have become too popular and adversarial for the regime liking. The
party has also increasingly re-engaged Moroccans politically building a
formidable base, in a country where deploticization is a state policy.

After the dismissal, a palace communiqué lauded
Benkirane’s service to the country, his “effectiveness, competence
and self-sacrifice,” adding that the king would task another member
of the PJD to form the government. Benkirane accepted the royal decision, in an austere tone:
“This is our king and he came to a decision under the framework
of the constitution, which I've always expressed support for…I'm going to
perform ablution, pray, and continue working on the ground.”

Benkirane, as Secretary General of the party, then called for a special national council meeting of the PJD
on Saturday. But before the party could gather to decide on its next move, the
king further limited its options by tasking Saadeddine
Othmani, the former Secretary General of the PJD and current head of the
party’s national council, with forming the new government.

Addressing the press at the special national council meeting on
Saturday, Benkirane resolutely declared that his government work
is over. By the end of the day, the PJD national council unanimously supported Othmani’s appointment.
Both Benkirane and Othmani reaffirmed the party’s dedication to
its Islamic reference, belief in gradual reforms and support for the monarchy.

The palace may expect
Othmani to yield to some of the demands of the palace-aligned makhzen parties
led by the National Rally of Independents (RNI). Benkirane feared the proposed
RNI coalition would lead to greater regime internal control, especially
with Driss Lachgar’s USFP as an obstructionist bloc within the PJD-led
government. The choice of Othmani suggests the gridlock was more about
Benkirane than the PJD. Othmani, who was briefly minister of foreign affairs in
Benkirane’s first government, is seen as more of a consensus-building
politician. And though it did not immediately cause discord within the cohesive
PJD, the removal of the beleaguered prime minster may be just the first phase
in the regime’s attempt to re-order the political landscape and slow the pace
of post-Arab uprisings reforms. Disrupting the government’s formation could
eventually paves the way for new legislative elections that bring a makhzenite
political elite to power.

The PJD’s 2011 and 2016
electoral successes bolstered confidence in its formidable grass root
mobilization and ability to win elections. Though the PJD could have mobilized
behind the revolutionary February 20th Movement in 2011, it chose to
pursue participation in elections. In doing so, the PJD followed a “third way,”opting to join the
political system in partnership with the palace and articulating a “refolutionary” discourse – focusing on
incremental reforms rather than outright revolution.

But the party’s meteoric
rise was not always in line with makhzen and palace interests. During the 2016
campaign, the populist Benkirane promoted his party as that of the people in
direct contrast to the palace-loyal parties. Walking a rhetorical tightrope,
the PJD expressed loyalty to the king, while criticizing the political system
for tahakoum, political manipulation. In the hours before
the official results of the legislative elections of October 2016 were
announced, Benkirane boldly suggested the results might
be subject to state manipulation. After it was clear that his party had won the
plurality of the seats, Benkirane hailed the results as a victory
for democracy and a further proof of public approval of his government’s
performance.

The
royal discharge of Benkirane speaks to the regime’s deep control of the
political system, which is intentionally fragmented into “divided structures of contestation” (SOCs).
In divided SOCs, the monarchy allows only select political opponents to take
part in the political system while excluding others. These limited spheres of
contestation shape government-opposition relations and dictate the rules of the
game for the opposition within the formal political system. The resulting
recycling of political parties and coalitions is necessary to maintain the
smokescreen of political participation.

In
the past, the makhzen has toppled parties wholesale, but this time, the change
is more strategic and calibrated. The palace is killing two birds with one
stone, removing the source of nuisance without subverting the will of the voters,
while forcing change in the PJD’s internal leadership structure.

The
Moroccan monarchy has a long tradition of managing opposition parties through
cooptation and confinement, allowing opposition parties some stake in power,
while the monarchy and the palace shadow government are ultimately in power. In
1997, the USFP won token control of the government. But undermined by the shadow government in the
palace, it ultimately lost popular support and bore the brunt of the blame for
the country’s socio-economic woes.

If the PJD had opted to leave the government for the opposition,
it could have jeopardized its electoral momentum and vision for gradual
reforms. But the party’s decision to stay in the government is not without
risks either, especially as it seeks to maintain its political standing and
appease its rank and file.

As Othmani negotiates with other parties to form the government,
it will be interesting to see what course the party charters for him and how
much leeway he will have. Remaining in the government under regime’s rules of
the game could see the PJD face the same fate as the USFP. While
Morocco has passed some nominal reforms in the six years since the Arab
uprisings shook the region, this latest incident is a clear reminder of who
really wields power in the monarchy.

Last Friday, Moroccans voted in the second legislative elections since the post-Arab uprisings constitutional reforms of 2011. Some 30 parties ran in a hotly contested race for the 395 parliamentary seats, but the ruling Islamist Party of Justice and Development (PJD) again secured a plurality. While the elections were hailed as proof of progress, they largely reinforced regime authority. The absence of a majority winner, and the continuing ideological fragmentation of the political system furthers the institutional imbalance of power between the palace and the government,
However, the limitations on political actors in Morocco may have actually created more space for the Islamist party. Many Moroccans see the PJD as a transparent and incorruptible force in Moroccan politics, and the party has used that to its advantage.

The PJD ran a grass-roots campaign, with a vast mass mobilization network of supporters, winning 125 seats in the parliament and consolidating past electoral gains. In a region where Islamist parties’ political experiments have been short lived, the PJD is on its way towards a second term at the helm of the government in Morocco. The electoral success of the PJD is a further testament to its impressive campaign machine and organization in mostly urban centers, but also due to a low 43 percent voter turnout, slightly lower than the 45 percent voter participation in the legislative elections in 2011.

Leading up to the elections, PJD leader Abdelilah Benkirane launched ads touting his party as the “party of the people,” a subtle reference to his main rival, the Party of the Authenticity and Modernity (PAM), which is seen as a palace puppet. Benkirane has continued to walk a tight rope of appearing loyal to the regime, while leveling subliminal critique of unelected shadow palace government for what he calls “tahakoum” or authoritarian political control.

Even in the hours before the Ministry of the Interior announced official results Benkirane was engaged in his usual doublespeak towards the regime when he suggested the results might be subject to state manipulation. But when it was clear that his party had won the plurality of the seats, the mercurial leader hailed the results as a “victory for democracy” and public approval of his government’s performance on major socio-economic issues.
Islamist success among low voter turnout

The PJD’s continued electoral success rested on its ability to motivate a large portion of the 15.7 million registered voters to cast their ballots for the party. But the low voter turnout is an indictment of the system of engineered elections in Morocco. The voter participation is further amplified in the context of the 28 million eligible voters in Morocco, in effect setting the real voter turnout at 23 percent last Friday. This is a particularly telling sign of Moroccans’ lack of confidence in not just the political parties but also the electoral system as a whole.

However, this low voter turnout favored the PJD political machine, which was able to mobilize their base to get to the polls. During the electoral campaign, the PJD’s strategy didn’t solely focus on its base. It sought to broaden its electoral constituencies by including Salafi Islamist candidates, one of whom, H’mad al-Qabbaj, was rejected by the Ministry of the Interior in a clear signal that the state still controls the political space and discourse.

This was a risky, albeit calculated, strategy for the PJD as a moderate Islamist party that has accepted the regime’s rules of the political game. Testing the limits of regime acceptance proved to be a point of contention between the party and its opponents, who orchestrated anti-PJD protests in Casablanca to denounce the party’s Islamist origins.

But the PJD wasn’t the only success story on Friday. Its main rival, the pro-palace, PAM came in second with 102 seats, effectively doubling its parliamentary seats from 2011. While the PJD’s predicament is its doublespeak, the PAM’s quandary lies in its close association with the palace. Its founder and de facto leader Fouad Ali al-Himma is a close adviser to the king. Al-Himma’s life and formative political experiences have been informed by his palace education alongside Mohammed VI and by an equally crucial time in the Ministry of the Interior. Over his career, al-Himma has mastered the core principles of the makhzen (deep authoritarian state structure) in the kingdom, namely the division of the political scene, electoral engineering and the drowning political dissent with palace-friendly parties in the name of “rationalization of the party system.”.

The PAM’s regime ties are well-known and account for its lack of credibility among many voters in Morocco. But the palace doesn’t allow open criticism of its close association with al-Himma. When the current Minister of Housing and Urban Policy, and Secretary General of the leftist Party for Progress and Socialism (PPS), Nabil Ben Abdallah, alluded to al-Himma’s relationship with the PAM, the royal cabinet issued an unprecedented communique chiding the minister for his comments. In a carefully planned electoral system, the regime sets the boundaries of acceptable political discourse.

Especially in the post-Arab uprisings era, the palace is less tolerant of any statements linking it to the elections. Even when the statement comes from a makhzenite politician like Benabdallah – who was instrumental in state repression of the press as a minister of communication from 2002 to 2007 – the regime is reluctant to lose control of the boundaries of tolerable political speech. Interestingly, Benabdallah’s PPS, and other leftist parties, suffered the steepest decline in electoral gains last Friday.

The election results consolidate the rise of a bipolar, PJD/PAM, political party system in Morocco, while historical parties decline. Furthermore, election outcomes once again reinforce the lack of ideological consistency in the party system in Morocco. Today, no main political party has a coherent ideology: even the PJD is, at this point, only loosely Islamist.

This ideological maelstrom will inevitably bring about a fragmented, ideologically-inchoate coalition government led by an electorally confident, but institutionally weakened PJD. Lacking a majority of the seats in the parliament, the PJD’s Benkirane will once again have to extend his hand across the aisle to other parties, notably, the historical nationalist-conservative al-Istiqlal party, which came in third in the elections with 46 seats as well as leftist parties. A pragmatic party, the PJD understands the reality of power politics in the Moroccan edifice and, at times, has demonstrated its willingness to sacrifice its Islamist philosophy for political power.

The PJD electoral success illustrates the rise of a new breed of Islamism, which is almost pragmatically secular and less ideologically tied to the core ethos of Islamism. For the PJD, like Ennahda in Tunisia, Islam is not din wa dawla (religion and state) anymore. This Islamism is a strategy of political action that seeks to separate its political from its da’wist (preaching) religious movement. Decades of political learning within Morocco’s circumscribed political space created this adaption. The PJD has realized that a rigid Islamist ideology would not be conducive to their own existence and would entail, as the PJD leader, Abdelilah Benkirane told me during my field work, “rejection and confrontation yielding no results.”

This pragmatic style of governance has so far paid great electoral dividends. The challenge for the PJD will be to sustain its dual role of working within the system, while seeking to address its main challenges like corruption. Ultimately, the Islamist party’s strategy of playing “games in multiple arenas” depends on regime tolerance and the enduring appeal of its narrative of authenticity among the plurality of the electorate in Morocco.

Monday, July 25, 2016

Turkey nearly underwent a complete democratic reversal in
last week. In the early hours of the attempted coup last Friday, President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan used an unlikely tool to galvanize his supporters when he
launched a FaceTime appeal to all Turks to descend to the streets. The Turkish
people heeded Erdogan's call, showing a great deal of maturity and courage in
facing the military and defeating the coup. A successful coup would have been
devastating to Turkey, but an unhinged post-coup Erdogan is equally
detrimental, not only to Turkey, but to the whole region’s democratic progress.

The failed military putsch against democratically elected
Erdoğan is a stark example that old autocratic habits die-hard in the Middle
East. The coup unmasked the reality of modern day Turkey, which has long dealt
with military incursions in civilian affairs which lasted until the Turkish
military memorandum of 1997, which prompted the resignation of then Islamist
Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan. But Turkey’s path towards democratic progress
has been dealt a serious blow despite the failure of the generals in toppling
the AKP leader.

When Erdoğan came to power in 2003, Turkey and the rest
of the world looked at the Turkish experience as a model for Islamic democratic
rule, that maybe the Kemalist secular principles could coexist with the AKP’s
Islamist ethos, and that a secular-Islamist synthesis was possible under robust
legal and institutional mechanisms. Erdoğan’s popularity was all the more
enviable when he presided over an impressive economic growth. In the Muslim
world, Erdoğan became the symbol for democratic renewal under an overtly
Islamist banner and a populist pan-Islamic leader who has been a staunch critic
of Israel, the rallying cry for all Arab and pan-Islamic demagogues. Erdoğan’s
opposition to Sisi’s coup in Egypt, and the brutal regime of Assad made him a
champion for many in the Arab world. Erdogan has also been so successful among Muslims
in advancing a religious discourse that he was even compared to medieval Muslim
ruler,Salah Eddine (Saladin)who conquered Jerusalem during the Crusades.

Erdoğan’s pan-Islamic popularity remained unchanged even
when he started displaying a penchant towards autocratic rule. In the years
preceding the coup, Erdoğan launched a relentless campaign against his
opponents within the confines of Turkish democratic institutions, orchestrating
sham trials known asBalyoz(Sledgehammer) whereby hundreds of
high ranking officers were jailed and/or removed from the military. Using the
parliamentary majority of the AKP, he steered the country towards an executive
presidential system and was elected president in 2014. Erdoğan repressed all
who dared to oppose his sultanistic ambitions in Turkey and appeared truly to
be the only game in town. Indeed, in hisinterview with al-JazeeraTuesday, Erdoğan revealed that he was utterly surprised
when he first heard of the coup from his brother-in-law as he was vacationing
in Marmaris. Some say he was always expecting this coup; but was not sure when
this attempt would take place.

But in his state citadel, Erdoğan has always harbored a
not so secret fear of one formidable opponent, a former ally turned nemesis,
the Muslim preacher and scholar Fethullah Gülen. Gülen, who fled Turkey in
1999, and is in the US in a self-imposed exile, is the spiritual leader of an
order that runs several organizations and some146 charter schools in the US. The Hizmet-Gülen movement is largely known for its
interfaith message of peace and tolerance around the world. But his supporters
in senior bureaucratic and judicial positions in Turkey are said to constitute
“a parallel structure” aiming to depose Erdogan’s government.

In the days after the failed coup, Erdoğan has notably
singled out Fethullah Gülen as the main culprit behind the coup, and has
started what amount to a purge of the court system and the police force, in
addition to almostone-third of the militaryestablishment.

Erdoğan’s post-coup plan is to dismantle whatever little
democratic gains Turkey achieved in the past. The failed coup and Erdogan’s
popularity have given him a “carte blanche” to mold the Turkish State in his
image, cleanse the political establishment of the “parallel structure”, and
tame the military once and for all. The scope of the purge will be devastating
for Erdogan’s opponents in the state institutions, and Gülen will have to fight
the narrative that he was behind a coup that most Turks, even the anti-Erdoğan
crowd, opposed.

Beyond Turkey, Erdoğan’s revanchism is a setback to the
cause of democratic progress in the region. Arab liberals have almost
unanimously extolled the Turkish president and justified his post-coup
policies. Facebook status updates and Twitter posts have almost all endorsed
Erdoğan providing various rationale for his attempts at eroding Turkish
democracy, ironically in the name of democratic legitimacy and street
popularity. Commitment to principles of the rule of law, individual freedom,
and the liberty of the press that Arab liberals so arduously fought for are
deemphasized right now. In their blind support of Erdoğan, Arab liberals’ and
democracy activists’ commitment to democratic principles has largely taken a
backseat to retribution.

But the jubilant statements about Erdoğan and the triumph
of the will of the people mask a bitter reality that Erdoğan has charted an
autocratic course that will be almost as devastating to Turkish democracy as a
military junta would have been. Erdoğan still has time to reverse some of his
reprisals and to promote legal, measured means for prosecuting coup plotters.
The failed coup should not be a “gift from God”, as Erdoğan let slip in his
first appearance after the coup in Istanbul, to settle score with rivals and
opponents.

The path to democracy is fraught with uncertainties, but
most democratic transitions in the context of Latin America and Eastern Europe
in the last two decades of the 20th century came through negotiated pacts
within the political elite. This assumes that the elite class is inclusive even
of those that are diametrically opposed ideologically to prevalent political or
social views. The whole sale purge of Erdoğan’s rivals bodes ill for the
institutional progress of Turkey and the region. Turkey used to be a model for
the region, perhaps now, we should look for another model elsewhere. Maybe
Tunisia still holds some of that hope for a Middle Eastern democracy.